You surely can. The state will of course go broke very quickly. But there's no law of physics or economics saying that the United States government can't go broke.
The larger question remains "which is the greater evil, to maintain evil immigration laws until you can dismantle the welfare state, or to lift them and risk the fallout of the government going broke". With the smaller more interesting question of "what kind of welfare policy should we advocate for once it's clear the government can't afford the present one".
Simply declaring two things incompatible tells you nothing about what policy you ought to advocate.
The statement is trivially false unless significantly qualified - and when qualified, it becomes obvious that it is a completely insufficient argument against immigration *or* a welfare state, because really it boils down to "but those of us who are already here might be made worse off!"
You can make the same argument against a welfare state regardless of immigration.
And it is not "trivially false." In an email to Henryk A. Kowalczyk, Friedman wrote:
"Immigration is a particularly difficult subject. There is no doubt that free and open immigration is the right policy in a libertarian state, but in a welfare state it is a different story: the supply of immigrants will become infinite."
That's hilarious. You think something is NOT trivially false and attempt to demonstrate that by offering a quote that is CLEARLY trivially false. The supply of immigrants will NOT become INFINITE.
In relationship to our welfare system's very finite ability to meet demand, yes, it is true. But, our dialog here won't resolve the debate. You are free to have the last word.
My final word is that it is not a good plan to attempt to win a public debate by changing the meanings of words. "Infinite" has a meaning. "False" has a meaning. "Gross exaggeration to the point of falsehood" has a very clear meaning. Milton Friedman knew he was exaggerating to make a point. He would have denied it was to be taken literally, let alone trivially true, and found anyone who did so gullible (or if done to win a debate, mendacious.)
This is still "it makes those of us already here less well off than otherwise" in slightly different clothes. It's not a good argument against a welfare state.
therefore, if you get made worse off by policy X, that policy is bad.
This is not a valid argument.
I'm not saying "it makes people worse off" is a bad argument *in general* - but it is a bad argument when deployed against immigration, because it is implicitly based on a premise that whoever is being made worse off *deserves* whatever benefits they're losing.
You do not have any more moral right to the substantial surplus that comes from being a US citizen than a potential immigrant. Arguing that immigration is bad because it takes what are effectively unearned rents from one group and distributes them to another group that arguably *did* earn them is not remotely persuasive.
Also I'm pretty sure even the claim that it would make existing citizens worse off is empirically wrong.
But when the people who are being made worse are the ones who decide, and who have the monopoly of force to restrict entry, then you do need to persuade them.
Going back to the original article, Dan is arguing that something like open borders is simply not politically feasible, and a more moderate position is needed if you care about persuading real people to move in the direction you prefer rather than just winning a philosophical debate that barely any actual voters care about.
I don't think the "rents" of the first world are unearned. I believe in Hive Mind. I think the first world is what it is because of the nature of its residents. If you mass introduce lower quality residents, the "rents" of having a functional society go away.
Maybe you feel that having a good IQ or whatever is unearned, but that is life buddy.
But given neither of those things is going to happen, the problem becomes 'given the existence of a universal welfare state for current and future citizens, what is optimal immigration policy'. Is the answer still 'open borders'?
How in the living fuck are you going to keep this citizen/non-citizen distinction going?
That's called "apartheid".
We aren't some gulf monarchy using dormitories of slaves to build our vanity projects.
Hey maybe we can do what Singapore does and subject migrants to pregnancy checks and outlaw relationships with citizens because we don't want to give citizenship to anyone born in Singapore.
Bryan addressed that in his Open Borders book. Long story short, you can, because most of government entitlements (in dollars) go to old people, not poor people, and immigrants are younger than the average population.
I guess we're gonna see, for at least the next 2 years anyway. But you miss the point. Open borders isn't what we have yet. IF we truly created open borders, what we have now will look like a trickle.
I know it's not feasible. I myself wouldn't want it. But not because of welfare. The main problem would be housing. If you have actual open borders, the whole world will be bidding up homes for sale in the US, raising the prices astronomically for natives. We just don't have the capacity to build fast enough to keep up with demand. Not with the current regulatory climate anyway.
The EU is full of welfare states, and has free moment of people.
Israel is a welfare state and allows anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent to become a citizen, no questions asked. The number of eligible people is more than 150% of its current population. By the same token the USA could allow anyone living in central America to become citizens, and still have a smaller eligible population.
Those 2017 figures predate the Joe's open borders. Sorry, but you'll convince me with #'s that are based on the current inflow, not those that pre-date Joe's open border policy. And as even the essay itself acknowleges: "First-generation immigrants are more costly to governments than are the native-born"...
I've read many breakdowns of the net cost of immigration, and I've come to the conclusion that they are a huge net cost on net. Every time I've reviewed the literature where that isn't the case, I've found an assumption in the data that fudges it to get the necessary result.
Often some kinds of expense is ignored (like education), or the most productive adult years are disproportionately counted, or characteristics of second generation are overestimated (or not counted). Sometimes "immigrant" is defined in a way to ignore illegal immigrants or skew it disproportionately Asian.
I mean we all know there is only one correct answer that anyone would be allowed to find. The few brave souls that have taken an honest look all come back saying that the big immigrants groups (Hispanics in America, Muslims in Europe) are a train wreck.
If you take the time, and I think I've taken the time more then enough to be comfortable that I'm not about to find anything new, you can parse through the data and figure out that immigrants are a huge fiscal burden. Probably hundreds of thousands of dollars in the negative for Hispanics, probably worse for Muslims in Europe.
Asians are good guys, and I used to support Asian immigration, but lately I've come to belief they are just too culturally different. I don't want America to take on more Asian values. I happen to like showing my face and breathing the air freely and taking some risks and being different from the crowd. They aren't exactly right wing on economics either, even if they hate shirkers.
My guess is that if you took the 130 IQ+ immigrants out, you would be capturing 90%+ of the positive fiscal impact.
Obviously, I don't care about everyone in the entire world equally. Nobody does.
But if I did, I would consider Open Borders the single most destructive and evil policy imaginable.
Everything decent in the world that makes it better than 99.99999% of all human history has come from a select group of societies populated by a select group of people. Open Borders threatens to destroy that by flooding these societies with genetic trash, which based on what data we have will most likely diminish or even destroy these societies.
Without these advanced societies gifting things like engineering and antibiotics to the third world the lives of those people will degrade to pre-modern levels. So in the end not being able to immigrate to the first world is actually good for those people, as living off our scraps is still better then anything they could ever build for themselves.
Immigration increases welfare because immigrants vote for welfare.
Places with more immigrants tend to have more welfare. California and the northeast were transformed into high tax one party democratic states by immigration. Urban areas full of immigrants have even higher taxes and more government waste.
It’s basic self interest for low productivity people to vote to use violence to steal from high productivity people.
If god wants open borders he can come down here and tell me. Till then I’ll assume your another zealot that wants to use god talk for your own ends.
I have to agree with Dan Klein - "Open Borders" isn't a slogan that helps persuade the persuadable.
I *think* I'm in sync with you, Bryan, on policy. But "freedom" strikes virtually everyone as a good thing, while "openness" doesn't. "Free migration" would in fact be a better slogan.
Re selling the policy, unlike "‘free markets’, ‘free trade’, and ‘free enterprise’, migration triggers a (literally) instinctive tribal defense, which needs to be overcome by reason and argument. It's intrinsically a harder sell.
I think "free migration" would be an easier sell if advocates supported making it conditional on good behavior (crime, resort to public funds, etc. being grounds for removal).
Second best would be to at least admit unlimited numbers of highly qualified people - with STEM degrees, successful entrepreneurs. high IQs, those with a committed job that pays over $150k/year, etc.
Another reasonable compromise might be to let immigrants post a bond against good behavior - say $10,000 or so - redeemable when they become citizens or decide to emigrate. And the bond could be used to pay costs of deportation if necessary.
"I’m not absolutist; I don’t say “Let’s have open borders even if it’s a complete disaster.” Nor do I say, “I refuse to consider the slightest exception.” But yes, I think immigration restrictions are (a) a monstrous injustice and, (b) the most economically harmful government regulations on the books."
Good, now tell us how and where you draw the line, and what constitutes a "complete disaster"? Because that determines whether "open borders" is the right slogan or whether you really favor "open borders to the extent that they don't materially harm those living in the receiving nation." And these two standards may produce radically different policies on the ground because it is quite plausible that widespread immigration from certain nations would severely damage the liberty interests of citizens living in liberal democracies, as argued here: https://www.academia.edu/38936607/The_Liberal_Defense_of_Immigration_Control
Those arguments seem quite convincing in theory but in practice I've found that quite a few ppl respond to advocacy of open borders with the: but what about terrorists objection.
My point is that I find that in practice ppl misinterpret the open borders slogan in a way they don't misinterpret free trade as a slogan. I think we all agree that we want to leave countries the ability to stop terrorists, search for weapons etc but the fact that ppl hear the slogan and get the impression that supporters oppose that is a problem
Yes, I think that's a messaging problem, but a minor one.
One easy way to stop almost all terrorists from coming in as immigrants would be to ask them to take a simple oath - one that violence-intending fanatics would be unable to take without violating their religion or principles. Of course they could lie, but I suspect very few people sincere enough to do violence for their ideas would be willing to lie.
While I can't defend Dr. Klein's hostility to free immigration, I do like his "restore 'liberalism' " project. I can think of a few of wedges that can help it succeed over time:
1. The internet is internationalizing us, and "liberal" retains its original meaning literally everywhere on Earth except the U.S., Canada, and GB (but not Australia).
2. The *only* people who still refer to social-democrat style left wingers as "liberals" are conservatives. The left doesn't use that term any more, and conservatives are a smaller group to convince!
3. The terms "liberalization", "liberalize", "illiberal", etc. retain their original meanings, even in U.S. English.
In conversations, leading with #3 can allow 'liberal' and 'liberalism' to be slipped in w/o confusing the listener, and help further the goal over time.
It does, but it has to always be adopted to current/modern times. I am not sure how Bastiat and Locke would have done regarding for example climate change, refugees and globalisation
Do you think globalization and the refugee issue are related? I think of them as two separate issues.
Re globalization, I think Mill and Smith would fully approve of free trade between nations, comparative advantage, and specialization.
I assume in Europe liberals (if you want to call them that) accept refugees and conservatives don't. There's a perceived tradeoff between world-benefit (accept refugees and make their lives better) and my-tribal-benefit (keep these penniless scroungers out of my country).
Bryan would point out that the refugees quickly become productive citizens and a net asset. I think that's true if they integrate (as generally happens in the US, at least within a generation) but less true in Europe (esp. places like France, where they physically segregate refugees from the general population, blunting the forces that cause integration). Plus refugees (any immigrants in large numbers) do alter the local culture, not always for the better. A little bit of formal cultural indoctrination (in schools, etc.) might go a long way to fixing that, but people on the left seem to oppose it these days.
One more thing. Refugees and migrating people are part of globalization. Because globalization is not only about economy, but also ideas of global citizenship and how we as humans should solve global problems and challenges
Replying to myself. To be fully open about my position - I think large numbers of low-skill immigrants do temporarily depress wages for low-skill native workers.
The immigrants do become net productive contributors, and do benefit the host country as a whole by more than they harm native low-skill workers (so there's surplus available to compensate those low-skill natives, in principle).
But I think we need to acknowledge that the pain to native low-skill workers is real - not just economic, but social. If only immigrants who don't speak the language are (you name it - say, hotel maids), then it becomes socially difficult for natives to do those jobs (I mean status-wise).
That's a real cost. It's smaller than the benefit from the immigrants, so I think we should let the immigrants in. But we should also (a) acclimatize the immigrants to local culture, helping them assimilate better and (b) compensate the losers, somehow.
Since 'right wing' can narrowly refer to ethnic, racial, or other kinds of nationalism (which is fairly illiberal imho) OR the sort of muddy mercantilist with populist tax policy practiced by U.S. Republicans, I try not to confuse things.
Ok, understand. My point is that Klein is mainly supporting ideas of liberalism as a bridge between liberals and conservatives (European meaning), rather than a more general liberalism for 21st century.
Smith is interesting because he also was a moral philosopher and one thing that is more known today is that all markets are regulated via informal and formal rules. The question if instead of "free market" it would be better to talk about "decentralised market" created and governed by individuals and communities, instead of governments ?
Linguist/Theologican: a) The word for "messenger" in the (Greek) bible is "angelos".
b) "only a messenger" is how the Quran describes prophet Mohammad.
Lay-man: I commented on the post of Dan Klein's piece. Then slept over it. Came up with "Smart Borders"(R) or "smart immigration"(D - or: 'fair immigration'?).
These I would use as an US-politician. (As in "tax-credit" instead of "negative income tax" - which I consider the worst name for a great idea if you need to talk to voters). B.C. should of course avoid such opaque ambiguity.
I think Dr. Caplan is not a "messenger" at all. Messengers have an ability to put their argument into context and seek to sway minds within the conditions and constraints in which they live. As much as I enjoy reading these posts, I think Dr. Caplan is best described not as a "messenger" but as a polemicist.
This is another very good post. I think that morally, Open Borders is correct. But I do share some of the concerns that Peter Singer has raised, which Bryan mentioned briefly in his summary post of their discussion.
How far can we push before we get someone like Trump again?
The thing is that Trump is not alone. There are already several mini Trumps in the USA. And they have always been there, even when the USA had almost no federal welfare state
2) But basically anyone can cross them illegally without too much trouble and sometimes we even pay for it. Probably we will give an amnesty every 20 years or so, and of course there is birthright citizenship even if your illegal.
3) Those migrants should try their best to settle in purple/red areas to one day vote for us, but especially they shouldn't move into white upper middle class liberal neighborhoods in any kind of numbers
The left can't support Open Borders because it would be politically suicidal, and anyway they don't really want a level of immigration that would destabilize their lives (and some probably genuinely believe it would be an all around disaster). Their preference would be for a level of immigration that causes a steady leftward drift in politics without inciting a backlash, as is the case on the border today (Texas and Florida Hispanics are rejecting mass immigration).
Open Borders, and quite frankly even the amount of immigration on the border today, is unpopular to the median voter. It's even unpopular for the median Hispanic voter on the border. It's unpopular because its a terrible idea and the median voter can see that.
There are left-wingers who could support open borders / free migration but only those who are in favour of decentralization and anracho-politics. Because it is hard to support both open borders and a high-tax big welfare state
Sometimes I do not see Klein as a promoter of liberalism. When I meet him once in Stockholm at a market-liberal think-tank called Timbro, he said that for right-wing liberals it would be better to vote for Trump GOP than for Libertarian Party of Dems, before the 2020 elections. Also, he has promoted that the far-right Sweden Democrats should be a part of the new right-wing government in Sweden, despite that SD has declared liberalism as its ideological enemy and want to abolish Sweden as a liberal society.
Hi, Vladan. I don't recall our meeting, but don't doubt your report. I do think the Republicans are the lesser evil, I don't think Trump was an exception to that, and I do think Swedes should normalize the Sweden Democrats. For one thing, that would reduce their garnering of the protest vote.
Regarding your thoughts about Republicans, you are wrong since right-wing populism and collectivism is worse, more horrible and dangerous compared to left-wing populism and collectivism. People as Bernie attack banks, big companies and capitalism. Such institutions have more money and resources to defend themselves in public debate. Compared to Trump who attacks minorities, poor people and immigrants who have much smaller resources to defend themselves in public debate. Plus, right-wing populism and collectivism is better in triggering our brains due to rhetoric about nation, family and religion, due to our tribalist and primitive human nature. You can read more about that in for example Johan Norberg's latest book "Open", including when it comes what happens when right-wing populists and collectivists are in power.
Regarding Sweden. As you know, Sweden is one of the most liberal, open and globalized societies worldwide at the moment. That is something that Sweden Democrats hate and they do not even recognise individuals as me as Swedes only because I was born outside of Sweden.
They are not only an anti-liberal party but also anti-democratic, racist and Christian nationalist in their rhetoric and politics. Research shows that when right-wing populists are in governments, the electoral support for them may decrease but that countries end up being less democratic and open, more authoritarian and repressive as regarding personal, economic and media freedoms. You can also take a look at Denmark where "normalization" of the far-right ended up with Denmark being less liberal, open, tolerant and with more taxation and political parties competing who is going to offer more welfare spending.
I think that sometimes in the future there are going to be books written with titles "Right and the tyranny" and sadly, you and many others are going to end up in style of "hall of shame". Because "normalising" and mainstreaming the far-right leads to very bad results and damages for whole societies as humanity in general.
Thanks Bryan. My position is that movement, migration and mobility should be free, open, secure globally for all law abiding individuals. We do not choose our birth places so we should be able to choose our life places
Also, compare to state borders. Colorado and Wyoming have a border? What makes it a border even though there is complete* migration of people allowed? I have never even been required to show papers when crossing that border. And yet no one denies it is a border.
Even in the case of a court order not to leave the state, there is no one at the border to check on your status. Rather, if the judge later determines that you have violated the order, you are subject to penalties.
Milton Friedman famously once said, “you cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state” (1999). He was and he remains correct.
You surely can. The state will of course go broke very quickly. But there's no law of physics or economics saying that the United States government can't go broke.
The larger question remains "which is the greater evil, to maintain evil immigration laws until you can dismantle the welfare state, or to lift them and risk the fallout of the government going broke". With the smaller more interesting question of "what kind of welfare policy should we advocate for once it's clear the government can't afford the present one".
Simply declaring two things incompatible tells you nothing about what policy you ought to advocate.
Precisely. Again, as Milton put it, "the more you subsidize anything, the more you have of it. The more you tax anything, the less you have of it."
No, he was not.
The statement is trivially false unless significantly qualified - and when qualified, it becomes obvious that it is a completely insufficient argument against immigration *or* a welfare state, because really it boils down to "but those of us who are already here might be made worse off!"
You can make the same argument against a welfare state regardless of immigration.
Milton Friedman's position was far more nuanced than he's given credit for on this topic. https://openborders.info/friedman-immigration-welfare-state/
And it is not "trivially false." In an email to Henryk A. Kowalczyk, Friedman wrote:
"Immigration is a particularly difficult subject. There is no doubt that free and open immigration is the right policy in a libertarian state, but in a welfare state it is a different story: the supply of immigrants will become infinite."
That's hilarious. You think something is NOT trivially false and attempt to demonstrate that by offering a quote that is CLEARLY trivially false. The supply of immigrants will NOT become INFINITE.
In relationship to our welfare system's very finite ability to meet demand, yes, it is true. But, our dialog here won't resolve the debate. You are free to have the last word.
My final word is that it is not a good plan to attempt to win a public debate by changing the meanings of words. "Infinite" has a meaning. "False" has a meaning. "Gross exaggeration to the point of falsehood" has a very clear meaning. Milton Friedman knew he was exaggerating to make a point. He would have denied it was to be taken literally, let alone trivially true, and found anyone who did so gullible (or if done to win a debate, mendacious.)
Well said.
It isn't an argument against immigration. It is an argument against totally open immigration.
Immigrants vote for the welfare state and utilize it at a disproportionate rate.
It's completely fair to blame them for it.
This is still "it makes those of us already here less well off than otherwise" in slightly different clothes. It's not a good argument against a welfare state.
If you break into my house and steal my stuff, I'm worse off and you're better off.
And to the extent crime has negative impacts beyond the actual damage of the crime, it can be net negative beyond the zero sum transfer.
You appear to be arguing as follows:
1. if someone robs you, you get made worse off
2. you getting robbed is bad
therefore, if you get made worse off by policy X, that policy is bad.
This is not a valid argument.
I'm not saying "it makes people worse off" is a bad argument *in general* - but it is a bad argument when deployed against immigration, because it is implicitly based on a premise that whoever is being made worse off *deserves* whatever benefits they're losing.
You do not have any more moral right to the substantial surplus that comes from being a US citizen than a potential immigrant. Arguing that immigration is bad because it takes what are effectively unearned rents from one group and distributes them to another group that arguably *did* earn them is not remotely persuasive.
Also I'm pretty sure even the claim that it would make existing citizens worse off is empirically wrong.
But when the people who are being made worse are the ones who decide, and who have the monopoly of force to restrict entry, then you do need to persuade them.
Going back to the original article, Dan is arguing that something like open borders is simply not politically feasible, and a more moderate position is needed if you care about persuading real people to move in the direction you prefer rather than just winning a philosophical debate that barely any actual voters care about.
I don't think the "rents" of the first world are unearned. I believe in Hive Mind. I think the first world is what it is because of the nature of its residents. If you mass introduce lower quality residents, the "rents" of having a functional society go away.
Maybe you feel that having a good IQ or whatever is unearned, but that is life buddy.
So lets have free immigration and no welfare state.
I have no problem with that.
Edit: My point being, the existence of the welfare state isn't a reason to not have free immigration, it is a reason to get rid of the welfare state.
Edit2: Also, Milton was wrong. You could still have a welfare state for CITIZENS ONLY. The key is no welfare for non-citizen immigrants.
Either edit doesn't change the problem posed by Friedman. And, Milton Friedman's position was far more nuanced than he's given credit for on this topic. https://openborders.info/friedman-immigration-welfare-state/
But given neither of those things is going to happen, the problem becomes 'given the existence of a universal welfare state for current and future citizens, what is optimal immigration policy'. Is the answer still 'open borders'?
How in the living fuck are you going to keep this citizen/non-citizen distinction going?
That's called "apartheid".
We aren't some gulf monarchy using dormitories of slaves to build our vanity projects.
Hey maybe we can do what Singapore does and subject migrants to pregnancy checks and outlaw relationships with citizens because we don't want to give citizenship to anyone born in Singapore.
Bryan addressed that in his Open Borders book. Long story short, you can, because most of government entitlements (in dollars) go to old people, not poor people, and immigrants are younger than the average population.
I guess we're gonna see, for at least the next 2 years anyway. But you miss the point. Open borders isn't what we have yet. IF we truly created open borders, what we have now will look like a trickle.
I know it's not feasible. I myself wouldn't want it. But not because of welfare. The main problem would be housing. If you have actual open borders, the whole world will be bidding up homes for sale in the US, raising the prices astronomically for natives. We just don't have the capacity to build fast enough to keep up with demand. Not with the current regulatory climate anyway.
The EU is full of welfare states, and has free moment of people.
Israel is a welfare state and allows anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent to become a citizen, no questions asked. The number of eligible people is more than 150% of its current population. By the same token the USA could allow anyone living in central America to become citizens, and still have a smaller eligible population.
Those 2017 figures predate the Joe's open borders. Sorry, but you'll convince me with #'s that are based on the current inflow, not those that pre-date Joe's open border policy. And as even the essay itself acknowleges: "First-generation immigrants are more costly to governments than are the native-born"...
I've read many breakdowns of the net cost of immigration, and I've come to the conclusion that they are a huge net cost on net. Every time I've reviewed the literature where that isn't the case, I've found an assumption in the data that fudges it to get the necessary result.
Often some kinds of expense is ignored (like education), or the most productive adult years are disproportionately counted, or characteristics of second generation are overestimated (or not counted). Sometimes "immigrant" is defined in a way to ignore illegal immigrants or skew it disproportionately Asian.
I mean we all know there is only one correct answer that anyone would be allowed to find. The few brave souls that have taken an honest look all come back saying that the big immigrants groups (Hispanics in America, Muslims in Europe) are a train wreck.
If you take the time, and I think I've taken the time more then enough to be comfortable that I'm not about to find anything new, you can parse through the data and figure out that immigrants are a huge fiscal burden. Probably hundreds of thousands of dollars in the negative for Hispanics, probably worse for Muslims in Europe.
Asians are good guys, and I used to support Asian immigration, but lately I've come to belief they are just too culturally different. I don't want America to take on more Asian values. I happen to like showing my face and breathing the air freely and taking some risks and being different from the crowd. They aren't exactly right wing on economics either, even if they hate shirkers.
My guess is that if you took the 130 IQ+ immigrants out, you would be capturing 90%+ of the positive fiscal impact.
Obviously, I don't care about everyone in the entire world equally. Nobody does.
But if I did, I would consider Open Borders the single most destructive and evil policy imaginable.
Everything decent in the world that makes it better than 99.99999% of all human history has come from a select group of societies populated by a select group of people. Open Borders threatens to destroy that by flooding these societies with genetic trash, which based on what data we have will most likely diminish or even destroy these societies.
Without these advanced societies gifting things like engineering and antibiotics to the third world the lives of those people will degrade to pre-modern levels. So in the end not being able to immigrate to the first world is actually good for those people, as living off our scraps is still better then anything they could ever build for themselves.
Immigration increases welfare because immigrants vote for welfare.
Places with more immigrants tend to have more welfare. California and the northeast were transformed into high tax one party democratic states by immigration. Urban areas full of immigrants have even higher taxes and more government waste.
It’s basic self interest for low productivity people to vote to use violence to steal from high productivity people.
If god wants open borders he can come down here and tell me. Till then I’ll assume your another zealot that wants to use god talk for your own ends.
I have to agree with Dan Klein - "Open Borders" isn't a slogan that helps persuade the persuadable.
I *think* I'm in sync with you, Bryan, on policy. But "freedom" strikes virtually everyone as a good thing, while "openness" doesn't. "Free migration" would in fact be a better slogan.
Re selling the policy, unlike "‘free markets’, ‘free trade’, and ‘free enterprise’, migration triggers a (literally) instinctive tribal defense, which needs to be overcome by reason and argument. It's intrinsically a harder sell.
I think "free migration" would be an easier sell if advocates supported making it conditional on good behavior (crime, resort to public funds, etc. being grounds for removal).
Second best would be to at least admit unlimited numbers of highly qualified people - with STEM degrees, successful entrepreneurs. high IQs, those with a committed job that pays over $150k/year, etc.
Another reasonable compromise might be to let immigrants post a bond against good behavior - say $10,000 or so - redeemable when they become citizens or decide to emigrate. And the bond could be used to pay costs of deportation if necessary.
Correct. Open borders is a fine slogan, and the correct position!
Bryan says:
"I’m not absolutist; I don’t say “Let’s have open borders even if it’s a complete disaster.” Nor do I say, “I refuse to consider the slightest exception.” But yes, I think immigration restrictions are (a) a monstrous injustice and, (b) the most economically harmful government regulations on the books."
Good, now tell us how and where you draw the line, and what constitutes a "complete disaster"? Because that determines whether "open borders" is the right slogan or whether you really favor "open borders to the extent that they don't materially harm those living in the receiving nation." And these two standards may produce radically different policies on the ground because it is quite plausible that widespread immigration from certain nations would severely damage the liberty interests of citizens living in liberal democracies, as argued here: https://www.academia.edu/38936607/The_Liberal_Defense_of_Immigration_Control
Those arguments seem quite convincing in theory but in practice I've found that quite a few ppl respond to advocacy of open borders with the: but what about terrorists objection.
OK, free migration for everyone. Except terrorists. We don't let them in.
Problem solved?
My point is that I find that in practice ppl misinterpret the open borders slogan in a way they don't misinterpret free trade as a slogan. I think we all agree that we want to leave countries the ability to stop terrorists, search for weapons etc but the fact that ppl hear the slogan and get the impression that supporters oppose that is a problem
Yes, I think that's a messaging problem, but a minor one.
One easy way to stop almost all terrorists from coming in as immigrants would be to ask them to take a simple oath - one that violence-intending fanatics would be unable to take without violating their religion or principles. Of course they could lie, but I suspect very few people sincere enough to do violence for their ideas would be willing to lie.
While I can't defend Dr. Klein's hostility to free immigration, I do like his "restore 'liberalism' " project. I can think of a few of wedges that can help it succeed over time:
1. The internet is internationalizing us, and "liberal" retains its original meaning literally everywhere on Earth except the U.S., Canada, and GB (but not Australia).
2. The *only* people who still refer to social-democrat style left wingers as "liberals" are conservatives. The left doesn't use that term any more, and conservatives are a smaller group to convince!
3. The terms "liberalization", "liberalize", "illiberal", etc. retain their original meanings, even in U.S. English.
In conversations, leading with #3 can allow 'liberal' and 'liberalism' to be slipped in w/o confusing the listener, and help further the goal over time.
"classical liberal" still works.
It does, but it has to always be adopted to current/modern times. I am not sure how Bastiat and Locke would have done regarding for example climate change, refugees and globalisation
I'm pretty sure they'd have been good with globalization. And I'm not sure "liberal" vs. "conservative" ever was much guide on refugees.
Do you have any argument regarding globalisation?
In Europe, there is a big difference of being liberal or conservative regarding refugees
Do you think globalization and the refugee issue are related? I think of them as two separate issues.
Re globalization, I think Mill and Smith would fully approve of free trade between nations, comparative advantage, and specialization.
I assume in Europe liberals (if you want to call them that) accept refugees and conservatives don't. There's a perceived tradeoff between world-benefit (accept refugees and make their lives better) and my-tribal-benefit (keep these penniless scroungers out of my country).
Bryan would point out that the refugees quickly become productive citizens and a net asset. I think that's true if they integrate (as generally happens in the US, at least within a generation) but less true in Europe (esp. places like France, where they physically segregate refugees from the general population, blunting the forces that cause integration). Plus refugees (any immigrants in large numbers) do alter the local culture, not always for the better. A little bit of formal cultural indoctrination (in schools, etc.) might go a long way to fixing that, but people on the left seem to oppose it these days.
One more thing. Refugees and migrating people are part of globalization. Because globalization is not only about economy, but also ideas of global citizenship and how we as humans should solve global problems and challenges
Replying to myself. To be fully open about my position - I think large numbers of low-skill immigrants do temporarily depress wages for low-skill native workers.
The immigrants do become net productive contributors, and do benefit the host country as a whole by more than they harm native low-skill workers (so there's surplus available to compensate those low-skill natives, in principle).
But I think we need to acknowledge that the pain to native low-skill workers is real - not just economic, but social. If only immigrants who don't speak the language are (you name it - say, hotel maids), then it becomes socially difficult for natives to do those jobs (I mean status-wise).
That's a real cost. It's smaller than the benefit from the immigrants, so I think we should let the immigrants in. But we should also (a) acclimatize the immigrants to local culture, helping them assimilate better and (b) compensate the losers, somehow.
All right, I understand how you are thinking. There are points for improvement and make policies better.
But how can liberalism be "restored" if it is only about right-wing liberalism and market focus? What about other topics and stories?
I have no idea what 'right wing liberalism' is.
Since 'right wing' can narrowly refer to ethnic, racial, or other kinds of nationalism (which is fairly illiberal imho) OR the sort of muddy mercantilist with populist tax policy practiced by U.S. Republicans, I try not to confuse things.
Ok, understand. My point is that Klein is mainly supporting ideas of liberalism as a bridge between liberals and conservatives (European meaning), rather than a more general liberalism for 21st century.
Smith is interesting because he also was a moral philosopher and one thing that is more known today is that all markets are regulated via informal and formal rules. The question if instead of "free market" it would be better to talk about "decentralised market" created and governed by individuals and communities, instead of governments ?
Linguist/Theologican: a) The word for "messenger" in the (Greek) bible is "angelos".
b) "only a messenger" is how the Quran describes prophet Mohammad.
Lay-man: I commented on the post of Dan Klein's piece. Then slept over it. Came up with "Smart Borders"(R) or "smart immigration"(D - or: 'fair immigration'?).
These I would use as an US-politician. (As in "tax-credit" instead of "negative income tax" - which I consider the worst name for a great idea if you need to talk to voters). B.C. should of course avoid such opaque ambiguity.
I think Dr. Caplan is not a "messenger" at all. Messengers have an ability to put their argument into context and seek to sway minds within the conditions and constraints in which they live. As much as I enjoy reading these posts, I think Dr. Caplan is best described not as a "messenger" but as a polemicist.
This is another very good post. I think that morally, Open Borders is correct. But I do share some of the concerns that Peter Singer has raised, which Bryan mentioned briefly in his summary post of their discussion.
How far can we push before we get someone like Trump again?
The thing is that Trump is not alone. There are already several mini Trumps in the USA. And they have always been there, even when the USA had almost no federal welfare state
The position of the left is that:
1) We have borders
2) But basically anyone can cross them illegally without too much trouble and sometimes we even pay for it. Probably we will give an amnesty every 20 years or so, and of course there is birthright citizenship even if your illegal.
3) Those migrants should try their best to settle in purple/red areas to one day vote for us, but especially they shouldn't move into white upper middle class liberal neighborhoods in any kind of numbers
The left can't support Open Borders because it would be politically suicidal, and anyway they don't really want a level of immigration that would destabilize their lives (and some probably genuinely believe it would be an all around disaster). Their preference would be for a level of immigration that causes a steady leftward drift in politics without inciting a backlash, as is the case on the border today (Texas and Florida Hispanics are rejecting mass immigration).
Open Borders, and quite frankly even the amount of immigration on the border today, is unpopular to the median voter. It's even unpopular for the median Hispanic voter on the border. It's unpopular because its a terrible idea and the median voter can see that.
There are left-wingers who could support open borders / free migration but only those who are in favour of decentralization and anracho-politics. Because it is hard to support both open borders and a high-tax big welfare state
No, it's not. Quite easy in fact. I do as generally immigrants increase overall economic activity and not all benefits are available to non-citizens.
Understand but it can be fixed with decentralization as via crypto and community basic income
Sometimes I do not see Klein as a promoter of liberalism. When I meet him once in Stockholm at a market-liberal think-tank called Timbro, he said that for right-wing liberals it would be better to vote for Trump GOP than for Libertarian Party of Dems, before the 2020 elections. Also, he has promoted that the far-right Sweden Democrats should be a part of the new right-wing government in Sweden, despite that SD has declared liberalism as its ideological enemy and want to abolish Sweden as a liberal society.
Hi, Vladan. I don't recall our meeting, but don't doubt your report. I do think the Republicans are the lesser evil, I don't think Trump was an exception to that, and I do think Swedes should normalize the Sweden Democrats. For one thing, that would reduce their garnering of the protest vote.
One more thing. You think that Republicans are "lesser evil" despite Jan 6 and all pro-Trump candidates and politicians as Ron De Santis ?
Hey Daniel
Thanks for your reply.
Regarding your thoughts about Republicans, you are wrong since right-wing populism and collectivism is worse, more horrible and dangerous compared to left-wing populism and collectivism. People as Bernie attack banks, big companies and capitalism. Such institutions have more money and resources to defend themselves in public debate. Compared to Trump who attacks minorities, poor people and immigrants who have much smaller resources to defend themselves in public debate. Plus, right-wing populism and collectivism is better in triggering our brains due to rhetoric about nation, family and religion, due to our tribalist and primitive human nature. You can read more about that in for example Johan Norberg's latest book "Open", including when it comes what happens when right-wing populists and collectivists are in power.
Regarding Sweden. As you know, Sweden is one of the most liberal, open and globalized societies worldwide at the moment. That is something that Sweden Democrats hate and they do not even recognise individuals as me as Swedes only because I was born outside of Sweden.
They are not only an anti-liberal party but also anti-democratic, racist and Christian nationalist in their rhetoric and politics. Research shows that when right-wing populists are in governments, the electoral support for them may decrease but that countries end up being less democratic and open, more authoritarian and repressive as regarding personal, economic and media freedoms. You can also take a look at Denmark where "normalization" of the far-right ended up with Denmark being less liberal, open, tolerant and with more taxation and political parties competing who is going to offer more welfare spending.
I think that sometimes in the future there are going to be books written with titles "Right and the tyranny" and sadly, you and many others are going to end up in style of "hall of shame". Because "normalising" and mainstreaming the far-right leads to very bad results and damages for whole societies as humanity in general.
https://glibe.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-right-wing-collectivism
Thanks Bryan. My position is that movement, migration and mobility should be free, open, secure globally for all law abiding individuals. We do not choose our birth places so we should be able to choose our life places
https://www.opulens.se/global/free-movement-for-humans-is-not-only-about-the-economy/
(I think it's "offenste", oder?)
So is there a difference in your mind between "Open Borders" and "No Borders" (with respect to the migration of people)?
I think he made that clear...axe murderers.
Also, compare to state borders. Colorado and Wyoming have a border? What makes it a border even though there is complete* migration of people allowed? I have never even been required to show papers when crossing that border. And yet no one denies it is a border.
*unless court ordered not to leave a state.
Even in the case of a court order not to leave the state, there is no one at the border to check on your status. Rather, if the judge later determines that you have violated the order, you are subject to penalties.